<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <docID>338342</docID> <postdate>2025-02-15 09:47:20</postdate> <headline>Solariums continue burning decade after national ban</headline> <body><p><img class="size-full wp-image-338343" src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20121213000610916638-original-resized.jpg" alt="" width="900" height="580" /></p> <caption>Rogue operators are selling sessions in privately operated sunbeds in spite of a commercial ban. (Julian Smith/AAP PHOTOS)</caption> <p><span class="kicker-line">By<strong> Katelyn Catanzariti</strong> in Sydney</span></p> <p><strong>Australians still pay to use commercial sunbeds illegally, more than 10 years since a nationwide ban in a country with one of the world's highest rates of skin cancer.</strong></p> <p>Private use of solariums remains legal but renting them out is banned in every state and territory, except the Northern Territory, where there are no commercial tanning businesses.</p> <p>But in NSW alone, the state's Environment Protection Authority receives an average of 16 reports per year about suspected improper solarium operations.</p> <p>Classified as Group 1 carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, sunbeds emit ultraviolet radiation linked to 95 per cent of melanomas, the deadliest skin cancer.</p> <p>Before the ban in late 2014, more than 2800 skin cancer cases and 43 melanoma-related deaths Australia-wide were attributed annually to solarium use, costing the health system around $3 million, according to Cancer Council Australia.</p> <p>The ban is estimated to have averted more than 31,000 melanomas in young Australians over their lifetime.</p> <p>Yet some private owners make a business of charging people to use their solariums or modified "collariums", which might use different coloured lights but still emit harmful UV radiation.</p> <p>The NSW authority recently fined a Wollongong man $3000 for operating two sunbeds from two separate properties in the area.</p> <p>The legality of private ownership is providing rogue operators with a loophole and tanning services are often advertised covertly online, says the authority's director of operations Adam Gilligan.</p> <p>"Sunbed use increases melanoma risk by almost 60 per cent - this isn't just illegal, it's dangerous," he said.</p> <p>Overexposure to UV radiation puts people at increased risk of skin cancer, whether direct sunlight or sunbed, the Cancer Council's National Skin Cancer Committee chair Anne Cust warned.</p> <p>"A suntan signals skin damage - there is no such thing as a safe tan," Prof Cust said.</p> <p>In September the Australian Bureau of Statistics released a survey funded by the Cancer Council that revealed nearly one in 10 Australians - more two million people - had attempted to tan in the previous year, including one-quarter of women aged 15 to 24.</p> <p>Some 1.5 million Australians had been sunburnt in the previous week and little more than half used three or more sun protection measures, according to the survey.</p> <p>Cancer Council Australia urges all Australians use all five SunSmart measures: slip on protective clothing, slop on SPF50+ sunscreen, slap on a broad-brimmed hat, seek shade and slide on sunglasses when UV levels are high.</p> </body>